


Tethered

by TheShadowPanther



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash, Stream of Consciousness, beware of cavities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:50:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheShadowPanther/pseuds/TheShadowPanther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neville needs to get away.  Fortunately, it's Harry to the rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tethered

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Cotton Candy Bingo 2012, prompt “Question/Request.”

The lake is quiet, so quiet it’s deafening. From afar, the water looks opaque, a color that is neither blue nor green but a solid mixture of both. There’s a flash of something – a fish? – above the surface, but when Neville shades his eyes, it doesn’t appear again. 

The pier is sturdy and warm underneath his feet. Between the slats, Neville can see the waves of the lake as they build up to the shore, then break. At first he sees zebra mussels dotted in the sand, then the shallow water. They’re glossed over brown with black stripes, and they don’t look as sharp or as parasitic as they’re supposed to be. The lake claims them soon enough, submerging them under that dense not-blue-not-green. Sometimes Neville will get a glimpse of something else, but only a glimpse, nothing more. 

The end of the pier comes before he knows it. He settles heavily on it, sits cross-legged and stares around at the trees and the underbrush nearby, the spread of water in front of him stretching nearly as far as he can see. 

He notes the quiet, how different it is from his ordinary life. There it is a helter-skelter chaos, populated by too many obligations, too many Ministry bureaucrats with smiles sharp and hungry, the calculation on the faces of the social climbers, the ordinary citizen looking at him with expectation heavy in their eyes, not enough time for friends or plants, his true love. It’s all give and give and give, here and there a few spots of take and even more infrequently neither give nor take, but rest. Neville can count those moments on the fingers of one hand. 

It’s all a big mess. 

Here, there is none of that. The lap of the waves on the shore is unobtrusive, almost soothing. The buzz of whatever insect is a background music that Neville can listen to or not as he chooses, rather than as he’s forced to. He makes a note to ask for some Insect Geddoff Potion, but it’s a vague thought, gone as soon as it’s come, just like that. 

Quiet fills the void, sinking into him with the breaths he takes, like h’s inhaling that instead of air. It weighs down his bones, sags his shoulders down from around his ears, opens his hands upwards where they lie at his side. 

He feels as if a weight has sloughed off of him, sloughed into the lake where the waves pass over it, incessantly, always going forward. Neville imagines the weight of his real life sinking to the bottom with the zebra mussels, taken by the indifferent not-blue-not-green into itself. Indifferent to the weight, that is, and to Neville, too, which is something that strikes a chord in him, half-uneasy, half-pleasant. 

Uneasy, because he’s lived too long unnoticed not to remember the ache of it still, and pleased, because that is what he needs right now. As he accepts this, acknowledges his need as opposed to the still-ingrained longing (for so many things), the unease subsides, the pleasure expands. 

Footsteps thump on the pier; a bottle appears in front of his face. Harry’s smile as Neville takes a sip does as much to warm him as the butterbeer does, maybe more besides. Harry sits so his shoulder bumps Neville’s, stays there as he rolls his pants legs up, sighs with satisfaction as he puts his feet into the water. Neville smiles; he’d wondered if he could do that, didn’t want to risk incurring displeasure or some sort of lake disease. The water is cool on his feet when he slides them in, echoes Harry’s sigh. 

They stay like that, he and Harry, sipping their butterbeers and simply breathing. Harry is a comforting presence, solid, at his shoulder, a reminder that Neville is tethered to physicality, which Neville also needs, he finds. The quiet is less heavy on him, within him, with the hardness of Harry’s shoulder pressing on his. 

Instead it settles, becomes a blanket across his shoulders. For a moment, Neville wishes he does have a blanket, then he could share it with Harry, draw him in as Harry has done for him. Turning, he discovers that maybe he has: Harry’s eyes are clear and calm, there’s a quirk at his mouth that speaks to a latent smile, and his hands are motionless around his bottle. 

Harry is still, Harry of the manic energy who can’t sit in one place for five minutes school, and he’s tranquil and calm with Neville, where Ron and Hermione are used to leaving him in one room only to find him in another. Warmth of a different kind suffuses Neville, and he almost doesn’t notice Harry turning to look at him, except the latent smile is coming out, and Harry’s eyes – Merlin, so green – are filled with affection, and if Neville fills up any more he is going to flat right off the pier into the sky. 

Not to worry; Harry’s got him tethered. 

When Neville says, “Thanks, Harry,” it’s without know he was going to speak. He thinks that’s all, that he’s said everything, but then: “For letting me come out here.” 

That’s too simple, Neville thinks. What he means to say is thanks for understanding when Neville was going spare, for taking some of the attention so Neville could have a breather. For taking Neville’s mumbled “Get me away from here” seriously, for taking him here to Harry’s lakefront house where “quiet” is too weak a word to describe the atmosphere. For not letting Neville escape into his head for too long, for tethering him when he threatened to fly off either from too much quietude or too much happiness. 

In short, thanks for everything. 

Somehow, Harry gets it. The understanding is in the curve of his no longer latent smile, the brief press of his thigh to Neville’s. Harry says, simply, “You’re welcome,” and “You’re welcome to come out here any time.” 

The “any time” falls from Harry’s lips like a promise, is one from the way Harry looks at Neville. Neville really is in danger of floating away now, so he reaches out to the person guaranteed to keep him down, keep him here, Harry – 

Harry, who takes Neville’s hands, entangles their fingers, and holds on.


End file.
